Gogi Time — Restaurant in Oakland

I heard that Gogi Time was a good Korean BBQ place from a close friend, so I gave it a try and I was honestly so disappointed. The food and service were both lackluster and brought down the overall mood of my friend group. Here is why.

Lets start with the food. The food came in small portions (for a group of 5) and the quality of the meat was poor with fatty cuts. We had to cut out all the fat because it became too much in the end. We also ordered steamed egg as an appetizer and was absolutely disgusted when we scooped down to discover that the egg was barely cooked. When we showed this to our server, he merely brushed it off and said he would just add a new order of steamed egg to our next order. Our steamed egg failed to come and we had to ask again for the egg to come in at all. When the steamed egg did come in and was fully cooked, we tried it only to discover that it was too salty to even eat. We also ordered the soju cocktails and we could tell instantly that the soju wasn't the best quality because it was so hard to force down. Good soju is supposed to be smooth going down and have a crisp aftertaste but the cocktails here had a strange metallic taste to them. I believe in rating a restaurant based on the sole quality and taste of the food and this place gets a major disapproval from me.

Next is the service which doesn't affect my ratings but definitely impacts my experience and my mood towards this restaurant. Our server was barely present and rarely checked up on our table. We would eat and cook for 10 minutes and wait for 30 minutes just for the next set of meat to come in or to even get the server to take our order. When the server did get our order, he would constantly forget certain parts of our order and we would have to repeat it multiple times. Near the end we got fed up and just asked for the check because we were no longer in the mood to repeat ourselves or continue eating.

Overall Gogi Time fails to live up to the expectations that I have for Korean BBQ. For 30+ dollars and an additional 18% gratuity charge for any groups 5 or more, I feel that there are better options and the prices of the drinks here are overpriced considering the size and the quality of the drinks...

Me and my friends have been going to Gogi time almost since they have opened and all the servers and people who work there they know me but there is a one asian guy who acts and talks like he is the owner of the place ( which is not)

Had an issue with him 1st time when he was my server cause he was totally ignoring me not one time but 4 time when i was trying to order at that day. I got really mad cause when i asked him that i'm ready to order he said he is busy and WAIT i was like WTH and asked for my check but the other guy who is very nice and knows me really apologized and said that I don't have to pay and sincerely apologized... Told him that i don't want the same guy as a server in a future..

So after couple month .. We had a reservation for 20 people on monday june 1st at 3pm after everybody came to a restaurant the table that they gave us at a corner was for 16 people not for 20. We asked the server to give us a bigger table but guess what THE SAME SERVER WHO ACTS AND TALKS LIKE HE OWNS THE PLACE came up to us and said that they not gonna provide us a bigger table cause HE DOES NOT WANT IT EVEN THOUGH HE COULD and told us to sit in a different table and go enjoy your party

I was like hell no and asked all my friends to leave place and we went to Kansai Sushi with no problem at all Kansai provided us with that big table in a back room !!! The bill was $1500 with food and drinks From now on none of us are gonna go to gogi time anymore Trust me there is enough korean bbq places in oakland and entire bay area. The only reason that we were going to gogi time that there is a very nice mongolian lady who serves us even though when she is not our server.

Bye bye gogi time and F YOU that server WHO acts and talks like he owns the place. I know that he is a friend of one of the investors of gogi time but even though if you are serving people you have to do it with a smile on your face and not being mean !

If a management of gogi time reads this the guy who i'm talking about should be fired cause he is the only one at your restaurant who brings a bad attitude to your...

When we sit down, I noticed the grill plate already had oil residue from no being wash carefully. No big deal, we used paper napkin to clean up the top. The waiter turned on the fire when the meats came. As the grill plate started to heat up, we started to putt meat on top of the grill plate. As we were putting meat in the “hot” grill plate, I noticed black/brown dirty soapy bubbles come out at the edge of the grill plate openings. See pictures of the grill plate and picture of the paper napkin after we tried to wipe off the black bubble. We told the waiter and he changed to another one. But the second one also spit out black soapy bubbles as it was heat up. Then the third one was also the same. I find out the reason is the grill plate is made of two stainless steel sheets one on top of another so it is almost impossible to wash away anything in between. So we end up using their outdoor solid grill plate and stove instead. I am sure all other tables in this restaurant would have similar problem. If you just put meat on top of the grill plate before it is heat up, you will not see the dirty black/brown soapy bubbles.

This is not the first time we ran into dirty grill plate at Korean BBQ restaurants. So pay attention to the grill plate when you eat at any Korean BBQ place. I told the restaurant they shouldn’t use this kind of grill plate. I hope they listen. The restaurant give us 15% off for the incident without asking. However I still feel I should inform every one about this because I saw they continue to serve other tables using the same style grill plates even after I informed them about the problem. And the tables next to us just put meats on their grill plates and didn’t notice anything and just eat…

I give two stars because the food is not bad and the manager let us used the outdoor solid plate with portable...